Bill Gates: We Need Mosquito Week More Than Shark Week

A field sample of mosquitoes that could carry West Nile Virus is seen at offices of the Riverside County Department of Environmental Health on April 26, 2007 in Hemet, California.

For many of us, mosquitoes might seem more pests than predators. But in a large part of the world, particularly among the poor, mosquitoes are a blight.

There are more than 2,500 species of mosquito, and they’re found in every region of the world except Antarctica. During the peak breeding seasons, they outnumber every other animal on Earth, except termites and ants. Despite their innocuous-sounding name—Spanish for “little fly”—they carry devastating diseases.

The worst is malaria, which kills more than 600,000 people every year; another 200 million cases incapacitate people for days at a time.

"It threatens half of the world’s population and causes billions of dollars in lost productivity annually."

It threatens half of the world’s population and causes billions of dollars in lost productivity annually. Other mosquito-borne diseases include dengue fever, yellow fever, and encephalitis...

The Connect Global Team has been investing in Aquaponics since our inception. Our First Official Trip as 'Connect Global' to Cusuna, we built 5 aquaponic systems. We have learned a lot since then, and our friend and partner Jorge Amador has built many more and taught several people his skills as well. We plan to build and facilitate an Aquaponic Training Center in Honduras in 2019.

In 2015, Connect Global launched an initiative in Honduras we call Connected Community. As a part of our ongoing support and investment into the Community of La Ceiba, Honduras our team will be providing training for the members of the local police department. The department leadership has asked for a specialized training for first responders to be able to learn life-saving techniques in order to mitigate the loss of life in the field.